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11 year old network administrator.

Doc

Doc

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Amazing story of an 11 year old who stepped up to help out his school.

11-year-old takes school network by the horns
By Ellen Messmer , Network World , 03/27/2008

When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Millbrook, Ala., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager.

Penn did it to help his mother, Paula, the school librarian who had computer support added to her workload a week before the school year started when the existing IT systems overseer suddenly departed. For Jon — who says his favorite reading material is computer trade magazines — it’s been the experience of a lifetime, even getting to select and install a gateway security appliance largely by himself.

“This is kind of a small school, and I’m known as the computer whiz,” the sixth grader says (For more offbeat networking stories, read our Wider Net archives.)

“We spent $2,158,” says young Penn, describing how he picked out the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance after evaluating it in a 30-day trial. He also looked at the Barracuda box — a tad more costly — and tried the Untangle open source product, which he said didn’t meet the school’s needs as well.

His school needed a gateway to protect against attacks, filter viruses and spam, and block inappropriate sites. Keeping costs down is important since the school is operating on a shoestring budget to keep its 60 aging computers, a donation from years ago, working for the roughly 200 students permitted to use them, along with the teachers.

The first thing Jon found as he leapt into the role of network manager was that he had to map out the network to find out what was on it. He bought some tools for this at CompUSA and realized there was an ungodly amount of computer viruses and spam, so he pressed the school to invest in filtering and antivirus protection.

“These computers are so old they don’t support all antivirus programs,” Penn says. The school took advantage of a Microsoft effort called Fresh Start that offers free software upgrades for schools with donated computers, switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.

One reason to do this was the hope of one day centrally managing the school’s computers so Jon doesn’t have to change them individually. To install Windows 2000, he removed obsolete network interface cards, Ethernet, video, print and sound drivers with the intent of having a better computer base by next fall.

While Jon says he spent some time evaluating antivirus products — he admires Kaspersky Lab’s software especially because it’s “lightweight running.” In the end the decision was made to get a gateway appliance to filter and block viruses and spam.
For his technical recommendations, Jon has had to present his suggestions to the school’s management for approval (“Because he’s not an adult, I’ve been hovering around,” his mother says.)

Along with school staff, the younger Penn has gotten involved in contributing to school policy on Web access. While blocking access to social networking sites such as MySpace wasn’t popular with many fellow students, he had to agree the school really didn’t need it.

Penn is now the technical support much of the time on everything from printer jams to setting up an external drive to backing up the school’s most important server. He was allowed to give a few lessons to his class about basic computers, having his classmates pull out a few components from old machines.

His father, Dave, a civil engineer, says: “I knew when Jon was three and could boot up my laptop, sign in and open Paint, that he had a knack for computers. But I never dreamed he’d be a network administrator at the age of 11.”

Penn’s parents both believe that technical people must have “integrity and character,” and should use their skills for beneficial, not malicious purposes.

Her son is precocious when it comes to computers but Paula says in the final analysis she hopes the experience with the school’s network helps him realize, “It’s his job to fight the bad guys.”

As for Jon, he says he loves testing virtualization software like VMware and wants to obtain “A+ certification” by passing the computer-technician exam by that name developed by trade group CompTIA. “Hopefully, I can do that this summer,” he says.

from: http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin.../news/2008/032708-netkid.html&site=datacenter
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urednecku

urednecku

Active member
Site Supporter
Leave it to the 'young -uns'!!!:respect::applause::applause:
(And I have trouble just turning the darn thing on!! )
 
N

nobull1

New member
urednecku said:
Leave it to the 'young -uns'!!!:respect::applause::applause:
quote]

Kids amaze me more all the time.
After reading this I asked my daughter, who is sitting across from me to try a speed typing test. I got her to type the forum rules for a discussion group she has belonged to for the last 6 months, or so. She is consistently typing 25-35 words per minute with no mistakes (faster with a couple of mistakes). That is probably fifty percent faster than I can type, after ten years of practise. I then asked her how many posts a day she is replying to on average, on the discussion board. She checked out todays number (and I saw it as well) it was 700+ so far ( she was also off school today). A couple of weeks ago I started teaching her HTML in my spare time. She is now doing one page layouts for other people on the forum. Although she is using some pre-designed pages, she is able to totally customize them with pictures, tables, colours, text, links and scroll boxes where ever she wants to place them. Next I am going to teach her how to use div's and CSS (once I get a better handle on it).
I just wonder what these kids will be able to do when they are 20. Oh her birthday was a couple of days ago, she is now nine

If anyone is interested, here she is doing a video newsletter for our customers http://www.bluebarn.ca/misc/march2008.wmv. This was our first attempt and I didn't know how to use transitions so we had to do it all as one clip. Next time we will break it up into segments and use the transitions. It will make it easier for her to only have to remember one segment at a time.
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American Woman

American Woman

New member
Site Supporter
nobull1 said:
urednecku said:
Leave it to the 'young -uns'!!!:respect::applause::applause:
quote]

Kids amaze me more all the time.
After reading this I asked my daughter, who is sitting across from me to try a speed typing test. I got her to type the forum rules for a discussion group she has belonged to for the last 6 months, or so. She is consistently typing 25-35 words per minute with no mistakes (faster with a couple of mistakes). That is probably fifty percent faster than I can type, after ten years of practise. I then asked her how many posts a day she is replying to on average, on the discussion board. She checked out todays number (and I saw it as well) it was 700+ so far ( she was also off school today). A couple of weeks ago I started teaching her HTML in my spare time. She is now doing one page layouts for other people on the forum. Although she is using some pre-designed pages, she is able to totally customize them with pictures, tables, colours, text, links and scroll boxes where ever she wants to place them. Next I am going to teach her how to use div's and CSS (once I get a better handle on it).
I just wonder what these kids will be able to do when they are 20. Oh her birthday was a couple of days ago, she is now nine
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Wow, smart kids. I have to brag a little......" I taught Redneck how to turn his on" :rolleyes:
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N

nobull1

New member
The kids today are exposed to so much more than ever before. If they have a want and an ability to learn they are just like sponges, at that age.
 
American Woman

American Woman

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Site Supporter
No wonder you told me this thread was gone....At least y'all are giving him good avice
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